The Shipbuilding Scandal marked the end of post-Occupation Japanese politics dominated by Yoshida Shigeru and the beginning of serious efforts to consolidate conservative elements into a single hegemonic party. In 1953 leading Japanese shipbuilding firms collaborated to bribe the government into revising a law to increase government shipbuilding subsidies. The desired revision was enacted in August 1953 but the presidents of Japan's major shipbuilders, along with several Diet members and bureaucrats, were arrested on corruption charges the following spring. Further investigations implicated top officials, including key lieutenants of Premier Yoshida Shigeru such as Sato Eisaku, the Jiyuto (Liberal Party) secretary-general. In April, when the public prosecutor's office moved to arrest Sato, Justice Minister Inukai Takeru ordered the withdrawal of the indictment, an extraordinary move supposedly ordered by Premier Yoshida Shigeru. His attitude toward this scandal was revealed in his comment that "party government would come to an end if it abided by the Political Funds Control Law."
This scandal accelerated a general decline of support for Yoshida and affected members of his party. The result was a decision by the Diet's lower house audit committee to investigate Yoshida's role in the scandal. In September 1954, when he refused to obey a formal summons, the audit committee passed a motion of censure. At the same time, conservative nationalists led by Hatoyama Ichiro and Kishi Nobusuke banded together to form an anti-Yoshida party and force him into retirement. This group became known as the Japan Democratic Party (Nihon Minshuto) and was inaugurated in November. As the fratricidal conflict developed between pro- and anti-Yoshida conservatives, the Japanese business community, led by the Keidanren (The Federation of Economic Organizations), the voice of Japanese industry, began to call for conservative unity under new leadership, if necessary. In December, the day before a scheduled noconfidence vote in the Diet, Yoshida's cabinet members resigned. Hatoyama then took over as premier, and Yoshida retired from politics. Another result of the Shipbuilding Scandal was Japanese big business organizations' pledge to create large new legal political funding mechanisms. Big business hoped to persuade conservative politicians to merge and thereby secure a stable conservative majority in the Diet. The Nihon Minshuto and the Jiyuto merged the following year to form the Liberal Democratic Party, which subsequently ruled Japan uninterruptedly until 1993.
Further Reading
Dower, John. (1988) Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.
Junnosuke, Masumi. (1985) Postwar Politics in Japan, 1945–1955. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California Press.
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